Mind Brain Identity Theory In The Animatrix

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The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance focuses on the war between humans and machines. Throughout the two videos we see a constant battle between the humans and the machines they’ve created. After years of war between the two groups, we finally see the machines taking control, overpowering the humans, and using them as their energy source. By observing the behavior of the humans in the videos, we can compare them to the various approaches to the mind/body problem and determine which theory they seem to believe in.
The mind brain identity theory states that there isn’t any difference between the mind and the brain; they are essentially the same thing. This theory also says that all psychological properties have identical physical properties. I think that the humans in this video could be classified as mind brain identity theorists. Because mind brain identity theorists believe that each psychological property has an identical physical property, they would have a hard time accepting that robots and humans are the same psychologically, yet physically made up of completely different elements. This could explain why they were so against the robots becoming equal members of society; because they genuinely didn’t believe that robots could have the same mental process as humans.
Functionalism is a theory on the relationship between the mind and the brain. Functionalists argue that all psychological properties are multiple realizable. This means that not every psychological property has an identical physical property. For example, most functionalists agree that in the future, robots could potentially be functioning members of society. Although humans and robots are different physically, they could have a mental or psychological process tha...

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...s that regardless of these physical differences, there’s a possibility that we all feel the same kind of pain. Multiple realizability is the main reason why I agree with the functionalists instead of the identity theory. While watching these two videos, I became even more convinced that functionalism is the most rational theory. It was obvious to me that the machines had become similar to the humans in a psychological sense even though they still looked physically different. In the beginning, I actually felt bad for the machines because they weren’t even given the chance to prove that they were equal to the humans in terms of mental state. As the second video played through I didn’t exactly feel bad for the machines anymore, but I thought they proved their mental ability even further because they were able to study the humans and take advantage of their weaknesses.

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